AS I suspect is the case with other Kossacks, my writing career began as a teenager working for the High School newspaper. I wrote editorials that took politicians, administrators and other Powers That Be to task and my future wife spent her time bailing me out with the Principal as my Editor in Chief. I was decidedly more trouble at that time than I am now, my only filter being the one at the tip of my Camel cigarette.
It would be fair to say I was happy in that role. Anymore, though, my open public writing is oriented toward flowers, basement cats and rocks crushers while only on occasion dabbling in the political. In comments I can still be a troublemaker. In real life it's a dedicated manuscript. And so the world turns.
More below, but first, a word from our sponsor ...
Top Comments recognizes the previous day's Top Mojo and strives to promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send comments (before 9:30pm ET) by email to topcomments@gmail.com or by our KosMail message board. Just click on the Spinning Top to make a submission. Look for the Spinning Top to pop up in diaries around Daily Kos.
Make sure that you include the direct link to the comment (the URL), which is available by clicking on that comment's date/time. Please let us know your Daily Kos user name if you use email so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we can include that as well. The diarist reserves the right to edit all content.
Please come in. You're invited to make yourself at home! Join us beneath the fleur de kos...
|
When my oldest son was five months old my mom had a milestone birthday and for that occasion I bought her a 12 lb lobster. Now, I know folks who object to eating meat of any kind, and others who balk at certain kinds of meat for a variety of reasons. In particular, some object to eating lobsters over a certain size because they represent a prime reproductive specimen (an argument I can get behind) and because massive size and weight can be indicators of age. My youngest boy doesn't like the idea of eating lamb. He says we shouldn't eat babies. The idea of eating grandpa can be equally unappealing.
While I can appreciate and have considered those arguments, I enjoy lobster and so does my mother. She wasn't interested in knowing that lobster's age but she did marvel at his size as did my wife, my mom's boyfriend and the cats. Possibly we were all in denial as carnivores with the exception of the cats, who could not have cared less about cruelty. Mom was quite enamored of that giant ocean cockroach in the vegetable drawer of my fridge. Being natives of Massachusetts who vacation in Maine lobsters are no wonder, but one this size was a true novelty.
"You know, that lobster is longer than the baby. We should take their picture together," she told us. It was an inevitability.
So while I spread out his blue afghan and lay that lobster, claws outstretched, along one side of the blanket, my wife lay the boy down next to him beatific in his cutest onesie with the silver family rattle in hand. Above him we stood, marveling at a lobster bigger than a boy, both creatures gurgling foam bubbles from their respective mouths.
Considering that my wife is from Louisiana, it was no great leap to envision the lobster was a crawfish and once that picture came back from the lab our vision was perfectly clear. Copies were made and dispersed to my in-laws in Lake Charles, Lafayette, New Orleans and Houston. Within the week our phone in Cambridge was buzzing with caller ID's from Acadiana looking to share in our delight.
"Y'all are a pur-dee fool," said one Auntie. "Everybody seen that picture just has to laugh. Ima send it to the paper."
And so she did send it to the paper with the description
"Baby Bastrop, son of Mr. and Mrs. Bastrop of Houston, TX, posing with a record size Louisiana crawfish."
Seeing no need to mention lobsters or Massachusetts and spoil the fun, the paper played along and printed the image with caption, happy to be in on a curiosity unlike any of them had ever seen. It was the talk of the town for a very long time.
Several years later when Paw Paw began to decline in health, I sat with him at the dining room table picking over photographs and documents from his life. Drawing them from old postal envelopes with a curator's care, he produced the bent and fading image of a relative shot and killed in Opelousas, having been mistaken for Pretty Boy Floyd by his hair and light skin. From another came Army records and the details of time spent as a forward observer and sniper for 92nd Infantry Division Buffalo Soldier during the occupation of North Apennines, Po Valley in Italy.
Uncovering papers that outlined his Court Martial, Paw Paw couldn't help but laugh. "I was "practicing medicine without a license" because I told the boys to add Purex to their canteens to combat diarrhea," he grinned. "Really I was practicing common sense as a black man and my CO didn't like it. There was no license for that."
As a result of that action Paw Paw went up a grade, surprising absolutely everyone. His CO went down a grade, surprising absolutely no one, and took a fine for being mean and stupid enough to waste the Court's time.
"That's when I was made a forward observer."
There was no laughter in that.
Eventually we made our way to more recent photos and memories, like sitting at the Woolworth lunch counter in Lake Charles during segregation. He survived that unharmed. Next we saw photos from his last day as a Postal Carrier and his first day as a retired man. He showed me my wife as a little girl, teeth missing in her Easter dress all smiles and shyness. He also had a picture of a younger me getting out of the car in front of that very house, my first visit to Lake Charles. In the photo I looked as nervous as I felt in the moment, a stranger and a world apart.
"You can see you're sweating," he said quietly, turning the photo over to check the date.
"Well, it was Christmas so it couldn't have been the heat." We both had to laugh at the truth in that statement.
Then Paw Paw got up and told me to hang on while he looked for one more memory. "One of my all time favorites," he called from the back room. There was a shifting of boxes and a digging through drawers as I stared at my own image, reliving the anxiety and fear that gripped my insides one December day years before. My pale white skin and long ponytail were a beacon of Other among the dark and creole faces of my skeptical in-laws. Next to that I placed another photo, taken as I exited the car, of Mo Mo's scowling face and crossed arms as she examined me from beneath a Sunday wig and hat. That look was to portend a rocky future between us.
When Paw Paw came back from the bedroom I could see he had a thick envelope and he was smiling more broadly than when talking about his wartime acquittal. "THIS is the one I want to look at, right here," he told me, laying the package on top of my photos. "You remember that one?"
Inside were fifty or sixty copies of the newspaper photo of my infant son with a giant Louisiana crawfish. It was astonishing to see the bulk of them.
"Those are the leftovers. I made more than I could hand out," he told me with a slap on the back. "There was no one left to give one to, at church or anywhere else. Tell me the story again of that lobster. How many pounds did you say he was?"
And I told him as he collected the prized possessions of his history and life, a baby and a giant crawfish now at the top of the pile. I held two copies in my hand, one each for my wife and myself, of that small town news and the permanent bridging of a cultural gap set out for all to see in the colors of black and white.
TOP COMMENTS
April 18, 2015
Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors! Let us hear from YOU
when you find that proficient comment.
From Puddytat:
Pam from Calif posted an awesome tweet, in this comment.
And some comment 'flags!'
Flagged by White Buffalo, this comment by Bivvity is out of recommendability, but it tells an important insider truth about insurance companies and their SOP.
Flagged by corvo, this comment by Jay Elias talks about the terrible nature of conventional war-time thinking.
Flagged by occupystephanie, this comment by gmoke is a fine one on Geotherapy.
|
TOP PHOTOS
April 18, 2015
Enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt™ below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. Have fun, Kossacks!
|